Luckily I made it through without incident. I don’t recommend that others do this, but given the circumstances I felt I didn’t have anything to lose. My logic was if I got stopped in Costa Rica they would get me on the next flight out of the country. I already had a ticket home from Cost Rica so the most I would have lost would have been the change fee.

Next time I’ll be sure to thoroughly scan the CDC website for each country I’m visiting in sequence.

One thing I noticed about this is there is no mention of a time line here in which the travel agent was working in, which becomes very important considering the yellow fever notice was up late in the year 2007.

If the travelers booked this trip 1-3 months prior to departure then I would say the blame is moreso on the Travel Agent as the notices appear to have been on the various web-sites.

On the other hand, if the traveler booked their airline tickets and made a hotel reservation months in advance (up to 11-months) or even a day before the notices went up on the web pages concerning yellow fever vac. this would not be the agents fault. The Agent may have very well provided these customers with accurate information at the time the clients purchased airline tickets and reserved their hotel room.

Unless the client was paying the Travel Agent some type of retainer to monitor changes up until their day of departure from the U.S., the agent is not at fault here. It is the passengers responsibility to know the entry requirements.

Sure the travel agent should make folks aware of entry requirements, but some agents are better at their job than others, so ultimately the responsibiity for getting the correct information lies with the traveler.

Candy Harrington

I think one has to be very careful and not paint everyone in the travel industry with the same brush – there are many good agents out there who actually do provide their clients with all the relevant information needed when arranging all kinds of travel plans. People seem very quick to forget that. It’s too bad that you’ve had negative experiences with the TA’s you’ve used (or so your posts indicate, anyway) – perhaps one day you’ll find a good TA.

I’m not the first one nor the last who have had rather poor experiences with TAs, if you read the other posts just on this page. If the OP was supposed to have researched her trip and all of its requirements, the TA doesn’t deserve to get paid a full commission because she didn’t earn it. However, I also said I thought the Paces should also be PARTLY responsible. Did you read that?

You and some of the other TAs on this board get extremely defensive. One wonders why? If you do a good job, you have nothing to worry about, right? My profession gets painted with a broad brush also by people who think they can do what I do. I don’t think they’re insulting me personally. I have developed a rather thick skin.

Guess what? The yellow fever vaccination requirement popped right up. Visitors to Costa Rica from Peru must have vaccines that are at least 10 days old, so getting vaccinated in Peru was not an option. The fact that TAs know about Timatic site but their customers do not makes me even more sure that the Paces’ TA should be at least partly responsible for this. Any TA should be responsible to providing all the information at their disposal to their customers regarding their customers’ travel purchase.

Here is the search I did:
http://www.timaticweb.com/cgi-bin/tim_website_client.cgi?SpecData=1&HEALTH=1&VISA=1&page=health&NA=US&AR=00&EM=US&PASSTYPES=PASS&DE=CR&selDest=Costa+Rica&selTrans=Use+ctrl-key+to+select+or+deselect+transit+point%28s%29+above&VT=PE&selVisi=Peru&Submit=Submit&user=NWB2C&subuser=NWB2C

The main site to access NWA’s Timatic information is:

http://www.nwa.com/services/timatic.html

Thanks for pointing this out. I think that the point of your post is that you’re out to CYA by providing little to no information. By the way, telling someone to contact their county health department to get information on vaccine requirements for foreign countries is not good advice. Some will have the information but the vast majority will not. A yellow fever vaccine is not the same as the MMR vaccine requirements to enter 1st grade. At least you could give them the correct place to contact before you tell them they’re on their own.

Mindy, on the other hand, seems like one of the few good TAs.

The point is that the travel agent thought they were providing service, whereas they were in reality doing just the opposite. We rebooked, and had a stern talk with the agency manager. It cost us a bit, and the agency learned its lesson about giving out travel information. I suppose we could have asked that our change fee be reimbursed, but we have and continue to have a good relationship with this agency (not for flights any more, but for cruises and other excursions).

It is not that hard to check what visa and immunizations are required. Especially, for a travel agent who *should know* what to look for and where. A lot of travellers have no clue thei might need a visa for some countries, or immunizations. As a travel agent, you must be aware of most of those requirements. A good travel agent will inform their clients without prompting.

Personally, I’d ask my travel agent what the deal is. If the agent then would say it’s my job to figure that out, I’d realize and tell him that it’s his last job from me.

I understand that requirements change all the time, and that sometimes things go wrong due to last minute changes. It is hard to legally define in advance where the responsability of a travel agents ends and where ‘last minute new requirements’ start, but overall, I think reasonable people understand perfectly where that line is.

In this case, the travel agent should have known.